No Backup? No Problem! $700 Please.

If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag. ~ Zig Ziglar

It happened again this past week. The phone call came in. The person on the other end was anxious. One miss click and an entire life time of photos was gone. Nothing left to recall the happy memories. No images of loved ones, now deceased. No financial data available. No more saved documents. And that collections of favorite kitten videos? Just a memory. Too make matters worse: money is tight. Age and health problems prevent finding a better job or a second job. Please, Please, Please? Can you help?

My mother always preached that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. When it comes to data backup, this is very true.

Data loss can happen in any number of ways. There’s a song running through my head, something about “let me count the ways….”

First, there is hardware failure. How many appliances work forever? That’s right! NONE! Why would you expect your computer to work forever? It’s not going to happen.

Second, is user error. Similar to the individual mentioned above, all it takes is a single confirmation click on the wrong button and what was supposed to be a revert to what the computer was doing last week, suddenly reverts the computer to what it was when brand spanking new.

Third is malicious intent. Everyone is running virus software now days, but did you know, virus software typically doesn’t stop malware? And malware is everywhere. It has infiltrated Yahoo ad servers, it hides on random, unpatched, web sites. You can’t escape it. The idea that you only need to worry if you are surfing porn sites or hate sites, hasn’t been true for years.

Want to know what it costs to recover valuable data? If the data loss is caused by hardware failure, the drive will have to be sent in to a data recovery site with a “clean room”. They typically charge $75 just to open up the drive and evaluate whether or not they can do anything with it. If they can, recovery costs start at $700 plus the cost of new media to put the recovered data onto. Years ago, I was called to an office to assist with rebuilding a server that died. The data recovery charge was $7000 (not including my labor). Have an extra $700 -$7000 burning a hole in your pocket? I would love to help you recover your data!

If you’re the stingy type, and don’t want to cough up $700-$7000 for data recovery, then I would suggest you learn how to do backups yourself.

Windows 10 makes it fairly easy. You will need an external hard drive, available everywhere. Plug the hard drive in. Open the settings app. (the little cog that appears when you click what use to be the start button). Go to Update & Security. Click Backup on the left side menu.

Click the Plus sign to add a drive and choose the external drive.

Click on More Options to choose the folders to include or exclude in the backup. Double check the settings for how often to backup and you’re done. How easy was that?

And again… Mom was right. A few minutes of prevention and an inexpensive drive can save you $700+ for a cure.